Browse by Tags

Installation bootstrap applications are increasingly common as products chain dependencies like the Microsoft .NET Framework. Because 64-bit Windows supports both 32- and 64-bit execution , but 64-bit executables on 32-bit Windows give what some users might consider cryptic error messages, installation...

Windows Installer 4.5 introduced a feature to install multiple packages in a single transaction. Multi-package transactions allow setup developers to install multiple packages as an atomic unit that are installed together, or rolled back completely. You can also apply patches to multiple products or...

After installing Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 , adding or removing features from Visual Studio may prompt for the file SQLSysClrTypes.msi with the following text: Setup is looking for file SQLSysClrTypes.msi. Please insert Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – ENU disk 1 now. The...

Since plans were made to ship WiX v3 in the box for Visual Studio 2010, the WiX working group has been working on fixing all outstanding bugs in the WiX v3 code base. Bob Arnson uploaded packages last week as a test on SourceForge and this week the following installation packages were uploaded on the...

A common question is how to create a Windows Installer package that installs 32-bit binaries on 32-bit platforms, and both 32- and 64-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms. If you're actually trying to install 64-bit binaries to appropriate directories and write to the 64-bit view of the registry, the short...

Last June before the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 shipped, I discussed how during administrative installations some 64-bit files overwrote some 32-bit files and I provided a transform to fix the issue. I filed a bug and the issue was fixed before .NET 2.0 shipped. Later in the release cycle the Office...

A reader who happened across my post on Windows Installer on 64-bit Platforms mentioned a problem with running 64-bit managed custom actions using the Visual Studio 2005 Windows Installer project. This also recently cropped up in an internal discussion alias. The issue is that if you...

Some time back I made modifications to the previous version of my shell extensions for .NET assemblies to display differences in the column handler for both native and managed binaries targeting the x86, IA64, and x64 platform architectures. Now that the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 has released , I...

Beginning with Windows Installer 3.0 you can install multiple patches at once, i.e. in a single install transaction. To do this you pass a semicolon-delimited list of fully-qualified paths to patches to the PATCH property . Windows Installer 2.0-style patches are sequenced first in the ordered specified...

Beginning with Windows Installer 2.0 installation developers can write installation packages that target 64-bit platforms . At first only IA64 was supported but support for AMD64 — now collectively referred to along with EM64T as x64 — was added in Windows Installer 3.0 . Many questions are...

If you've tried to install the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2 redistributable for either ia64 or x64 from an administrative installation point, you might've seen an error like the following: While investigating patching scenarios for 64-bit SKUs I found that for source extraction and administrative...

Not so long ago, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 for x64 were released to manufacturing (RTM'd). Today, they have finally shipped and are available to consumers, but you won't find these yet on retail sales shelves. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is available on x64 machines now, and users...

Working on 32- and 64-bit patch support for Developer Division projects like the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 , I've been involved with many threads and in many meetings about the various scenarios and solutions for producing patches that target our supported platform architectures. .NET...

Yesterday was a truly remarkable day. Not since Windows NT 3.1 released in 1993 have we seen such a shift in computing on Windows to another architecture. Windows Server 2003 SP1 for x64 and Windows XP Professional for x64 were released to manufacturing (RTM). While Windows Server 2003 was RTM'd for...

With the .NET Framework 2.0 now supporting 64-bit platforms, I have begun work on upgrading our patch build system to handle 64-bit patches. It's been quite an adventure down the yellow-brick road of 64 bitness that I think is worth sharing. Why does the .NET Framework need to support 64-bit platforms...